RNA 4 soldiers dead/ Maoists 540 dead (est, down from 650)

"warshing machines"
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Or, creek/crick.

But the English are just as good at butchering English as we are. Like the reading primer

" 'ooked on p'onics " :)
 
Originally posted by Bill Martino
Seems the kids today are using "to go" in lieu of "to say." Drives me nuts. I go, "let's go to the bar." She goes, "no, not tonight," and I want to tell them "Let's say to the bar," and see what they go.
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Me too - 'like' is the other one used to replace 'say', 'think', 'believe', &c. - I was like 'no way' and he was like 'yes way', &c., &c.

--B.
 
Beoram; has anything changed? Is anything different occuring with language transition? I remember 'like'...and understood the later, 'he go's... It seems that once kids grew out of these simplicities, and now they arrive mainstream in adulthood. Am I wrong?


munk
 
Originally posted by firkin
Beo,

I've heard that mechanism of language evolution, and it makes sense as part of the story. The "silly" example also has to do with a change in conception of the manifestations of the deity/deities involved, I suspect. The adjective describes a similar state as before, the sgnificance of that state has changed though.
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I don't think it has anything to with deities - the cognate word in German, 'sellig', still means 'blessed'. 'Silly' seems to have gone through a graduate semantic slide - from 'blessed' to a euphemistic 'touched by God' (i.e. a bit slow) to 'not very bright' to 'silly'.

But how often are two contradictory meanings accepted at the same time in the absence of sarcasm?
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Ask Berk, he's a lawyer, no? In modern English, there's at least one word which has two meaning which are completely opposite, not just different like 'blessed' and 'silly': let, one meaning being 'to allow, permit', &c., the other meaning being 'to hinder, prevent, e.g. the legal phrase without let or hinderance

B.
 
Originally posted by munk
Beoram; has anything changed? Is anything different occuring with language transition? I remember 'like'...and understood the later, 'he go's... It seems that once kids grew out of these simplicities, and now they arrive mainstream in adulthood. Am I wrong?
munk
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I'm not sure what you mean - everything changes but change itself. There are different factors which affect change - American English actually tends to be more 'conservative' (it has changed less) than British English because American used to be on the 'periphery' of the English-speaking world, whilst Britain (to be specific, London) was in the 'centre'. Of course, now that isn't true, American has its own centres, New York, LA, &c. And it's own standard, 'General American'. So I think American English changes at the same rate as British English now, but it's got some 'catching up' to do.

Unfortunately, the relevant uses 'like' and 'go' have hit the mainstream - I don't use them--but I have professors who use them, I know people in their 50s who use them. Hopefully it'll die out - but it isn't a case of children using a 'simpler' language - by the age of 4 or 5, children have learnt about 95% of 'adult' language (I mean 'adult' syntax and such, not naughty words). But sometimes linguistic changes 'don't take' for whatever reason.

'Like' is a strange one - it's a rather large semantic collapse - people with 'like'-grammars use 'like' to mean not only 'say', but 'think', 'believe', 'feel' and other such verbs, as well as adding the 'useless' like - e.g. 'He was like, weird' and 'like' in place of 'hesistance' words like 'er, um, ah'.

--B.
 
Originally posted by Tohatchi NM
Language is a dynamic thing. It sort of gets reworked every so often - pretty regularly these days, given the volume of media and other communications. Every so often, people have to stake out a piece of language and make it their own - evidence the reclaiming of certain epithets by blacks, gays, feminists, etc.
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This is true to some degree, but language changed all the same in the 'dark ages' too. So it's not just media. And the 'staking out of linguistic territory' (which is rather annoying I find) is typically rather ephemeral and only affects a rather small part of language - though one may notice it more than some other changes

Static language is pretty boring, and on the road to death. It's pretty sad. Out here on the reservation, Navajo has enough speakers to tread water, but lots and lots is being lost, and the culture with it. Lots of other NDNs aren't so lucky - native Alaskans where half a dozen people speak a language, and they all might go in the next blizzard.
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Language never really stays static - in a sad way language death is also a sort of language change - in Australia, linguists studying the aboriginal languages find that as these languages die out, the younger generations who still speak them begin to make them more and more like English (changing the syntax to be more like English, using more English words, &c.). The sad thing about language death is that it is happening all over the place, it is estimated in 100 years, about 2,000 languages (give or take, I don't recall the exact no.)will have become completely extinct..

--B.
 
Originally posted by Bill Martino
How can I learn a foreign language when I still haven't mastered my own?
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I think the lesson is that no-one ever really masters any language - that why languages keep changing...

--B.
 
Originally posted by Bill Martino
2,000 languages lost seems somehow very sad to me.
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Yes, the world loses something of its richness with every loss of a language or a culture..
 
What is sad to me is I think how difficult it must have been to develop and use those languages -- only to see them lost.
 
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